The Truth
by Caitlyn Rose
Summary: This was not one of those things, Alicia knew, that could be brushed under the carpet with a mumbled, mutual apology and a sheepish smile. For a start, that only really worked when there was alcohol involved."


The truth was that she had recognised the look in his eyes, and she'd seen his hand moving towards her face, and she'd felt his breath on her skin.

The truth was that she'd had plenty of time to pull away, and she hadn't. All she'd done was ask for more.

The truth was that she had _wanted_ it.

And if there was one thing to be said about Alicia, she was all about the truth these days.

----

This was not one of those things, Alicia knew, that could be brushed under the carpet with a mumbled, mutual apology and a sheepish smile. For a start, that only really worked when there was alcohol involved.

No, she understood instinctively that this would never be something to tease one another about some day, something to reminisce over in years to come.

Oh, do you remember that time we made out in your office? And I was married and you were my boss, but you kissed me so I couldn't breath, couldn't think…

No.

Alicia took a deep breath and exhaled quietly. Her husband was disgraced, and an adulterer and currently out on bail. Her children were evidently slightly more messed up by this entire debacle than she'd previously thought, and were now definitely keeping secrets and telling lies. Thanks to the appeal, her home was quite often filled with people she didn't really know or trust, but felt compelled to make coffee for at regular intervals. Her mother-in-law called at least thrice daily.

Having one area of her life which wasn't a complete and utter shambles had certainly made for very pleasant respite, while it had lasted.

She stared steadfastly at the wall in front of her, feeling sick, and remorseful and stupid. Bad wife, bad mother, really fucking bad employee.

But, then, there was something else too.

The realisation that wanting something and for once – for _once_ – just letting herself have it, actually felt pretty damn good. A potent kaleidoscope of feelings that she had forgotten even existed bubbled mercilessly in her stomach. _Fear-excitement-danger-desire_. It was agonising and delicious at once, and even when (she'd thought) things were good with Peter, she still hadn't experienced anything like it in a long time.

In fact, probably not since the last time she'd kissed Will Gardener when she wasn't really supposed to.

She craned her neck to look behind her, and closed her eyes briefly before turning away. So maybe she _had_ merely been momentarily flattered, or confused, or both. She truly did not know. One thing, however, had made itself abundantly clear to Alicia. If anyone had served to scratch an itch that night, it wasn't the man she'd run from. It was the one sleeping soundly beside her.

She didn't wait long before extricating herself and retreating back to her own bed. A ten step walk of shame had to be the shortest on record.

----

The week which followed was strange and unsettling, in more ways than she could even process. The mere sight of Peter and Will sitting together in her living room was bizarre beyond belief. Any fragile sense of "normal" that she had cobbled together in the preceding six months seemed to have been bulldozed flat in the space of twenty four hours. She would have resented more it if it weren't at least a little her own fault.

As it was, Alicia had wrapped her cardigan around her, curled into a corner chair and said little, trying not focus on this horrible sense of invasion. She was the one who had bought this apartment – _her_ apartment. She'd found it, furnished it and tried her damndest to cocoon her children in it.

That her boss - unassimilated as he was into her home life - might seem out of context here, was probably unsurprising, this Alicia knew.

The fact that her husband did too was rather more unusual, she had to admit.

----

A brief encounter with Will in her office was almost as wretched in reality as it had been in her mind, though somehow in a different way than she'd expected.

He'd come to her wide open and exposed in a way that – save for the vulnerability he'd let show through the night before – she hadn't really witnessed since joining the firm.

He was the hotshot young partner at the top of his game; charming everyone, making deals, walking that tightrope between legality and felony like it was a stroll in the park.

He'd been the same way at Georgetown, she supposed. He wielded a certain confidence – both in his studies and in his personal life - that could translate into just a little more swagger than he'd earned back then, but such a sweet boy really. It had taken Alicia a while to see that, actually – and she used to sometimes think she was the only one who'd ever _truly_ been allowed to.

When Will had suggested dinner, she'd decided there and then that, whilst it was a very mature suggestion on his part, it would simply not be happening. No good could come of it.

It was unclear to her, therefore, quite how she ended up sitting opposite him seven days later, pretending to contemplate appetizers.

She snapped her menu down on the table abruptly.

"I don't think we should do this, Will."

He set his own menu aside, meeting her eyes calmly. "Have dinner? We've been saying we would since you joined the firm."

Alicia regarded the man before her for a moment, and was struck again by how little he seemed to have changed since she'd known him in college. The fact that it had been almost twenty years since they'd celebrated that first mock trial win together was slightly scary.

She sighed. "I think I'll have the lamb."

----

"So, how're things with Peter?" he said eventually, placing his cutlery neatly down on his plate.

Alicia paused mid-bite. Fun, easy conversation over dinner had lulled her into a false sense of security.

She shrugged slightly. "He's fine. You know, happy to be home. Preparation for the appeal seems to be going well."

"Yeah," Will replied, appearing uneasy for the first time. "But… how're things with Peter and _you_?"

"Oh." Alicia stopped short, her stock reply having failed her. Funnily enough, that was a question people rarely asked. And God knew, they seemed happy to quiz her on just about anything else.

She shrugged again. "Fine. I guess. I mean, I don't know, really."

He shook his head, a frustrated sigh turning into a laugh.

"You know, you never used to be this hard to read Alicia," he said amusedly.

She appeared to consider this.

"Maybe you were just better at it back then," she couldn't resist returning wickedly.

"Maybe," he conceded with a small smile and - possibly for the first time – she recognised the warm affection in his eyes when he spoke to her for what it was.

"So… how much does Peter know?"

"About…" she prompted carefully.

"Us," Will supplied simply. "Law school. Last week."

"He knows we were friends at Georgetown," Alicia replied, ignoring his raised eyebrow. "And I didn't tell him anything about last week."

He just nodded, absorbing the situation, weighing his next move.

"Though I did go home and have sex with him for the first time in a long time, so I guess he probably thought that spoke for itself," she burst out, her teeth and tongue getting in each other's way, as though she couldn't speak the words fast enough.

She looked up at him tentatively, gauging his response. A quick flash of hurt in his eyes, an angry twitch of his lips before he set his jaw and met her gaze.

"I hate lies," she said softly, in explanation to an unasked question. And you've never lied to me, so…"

"Why'd you do it, Alicia? Why _then_?" he asked, a barely-suppressed urgency in his tone.

Alicia bit the inside of her lip, deciding how far to go here. There was honest and then there was _honest_.

"Because…" she looked down at the tablecloth, plumping (through lack of imagination as much as anything) for the latter. "Well. I guess because I wanted you, and then I just… felt like I needed _someone_."

"Are you saying it was a mistake?" he questioned smoothly, his lawyer's brain always ready to infer, to push a little bit further.

"Yes," Alicia answered honestly, with only a millisecond's hesitation.

And it probably wasn't the first one she'd made lately, but it's the only one she could honestly say she regretted.

----

One dessert, two spoons and a lighter topic of conversation.

"So," she started archly, "this is all pretty ironic really, considering how much you hated me when we first met."

"Oh, Alicia," he replied knowingly, his eyes twinkling, "you hated me _so_ much more than I hated you."

"Huh!" she exclaimed in mock annoyance, scooping up another spoonful of chocolate mousse.

"It's true," Will continued matter-of-factly. "There I was being perfectly nice to you, and you just were not falling for my charms –"

"Well, that right there must have been a shock to your system," she interrupted slyly.

To say that Will Gardner had girls lining up for him would have been an exaggeration, but not by much.

"It _was_," he shot back with a smile. "But then I kind of got why you had such a stick up your ass around me and I figured-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" she exclaimed, halting him with the palm of her hand. "_What_?" she asked laughingly, as he met her gaze irreverently.

"Well, you were used to being the best, Alicia," he replied in explanation. "You didn't even have to work at it before you got to Georgetown. As it happens, I didn't either," he added as an aside. "Anyway, the point is, I was the first person you ever met who you thought might actually be smarter than you."

Alicia raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow, her lips curling into a half smile. "Oh, is that right?"

"Yeah," he answered loftily, reaching towards the dessert again. "So, I figured if you wanted a competition, I'd give you one. Now, when you started to win," he continued with a grin, "that's when I started to hate you just a little bit."

She tipped her head back slightly and laughed – a carefree, full-bodied sound that almost seemed foreign even to her own ear. "That's _right_," she exclaimed, as though the memory had only just resurfaced. "I _did_ kick your ass in a few of those mooting contests didn't I?"

Will just shrugged, tilting his head in chagrined assent, taking another sip of his wine.

"So, is that what you told yourself to soften the blow?" Alicia teased. "'She's just threatened by me'"?

"No, you told me that one yourself," he returned smoothly.

"What? I did not," she scoffed.

"Yeah you did. That night after we won our first mock trial. You know the one against Jeremy Carroll and…" he trailed off, frowning. "God…what was her name? She moved to New York right after school I think."

"Amy Hewitt," Alicia replied easily. She remembered that first trial better than any of the dozens which came after it. Looking back, it was a fairly standard case about constructive trusts of the family home – equitable versus legal rights and all that. But they had treated as though it was a Supreme Court appeal, pouring over complex judgements for hours, splitting hairs between established precedent and their fictional case.

It had been an interesting experience, actually, being partnered with someone who she didn't have to completely carry – and certainly a first for Alicia. Instead, she found that Will did more than his share of the work, reassuring her and challenging her in equal measure on those long nights in the library when she often felt like tearing her hair out. Sometimes, he even brought her coffee. And he was _funny_.

Looking at Will now - sitting opposite her and helping himself to another profiterole - she could vividly remember the feeling of pure elation that had flooded over her when the 'judge' returned with his verdict. And as he'd grinned over at her, pulling into a hug, the victory was somehow even sweeter for being not just hers, but _theirs_.

And yes, now that she thought about it, she did seem to have a vague recollection of inviting him back to her apartment for a post-victory meal, admitting to him later that she really had tried to dislike him for the better part of a year, but only because such a tactic seemed like her best chance of staying on course. One summer internship in the European Union, one in Washington, graduate as valedictorian, have her pick of junior associate jobs – that was the plan. She did not need some little charmer who thought he was the shit messing that up. He'd laughed his head off when she told him.

She smiled a little, raising her wine glass to her lips. "That's right." she assented slowly. "I remember."

It had been right after several Coronas apiece, and right before they started to make out.

----

"Oh my God, Will!" Alicia shrieked, as they exited the restaurant, flinging her hand onto his arm dramatically. "Do you remember the night with the… the….all the beeping," she managed eventually, through hysterical laughter.

Will guffawed, clutching onto her too. "How could I forget, I think I spent about an hour dismantling every electrical appliance in your apartment."

"You were like Columbo or something."

"What did it turn out to be anyway? All I remember is that I was about to just start smashing random items when it stopped."

"Carbon monoxide detector," Alicia replied, still laughing. "I didn't even know I owned a carbon monoxide detector."

"Clearly," he noted amusedly. "You didn't buy a battery for it once in three years. Tut tut, Alicia," he teased. "Carbon monoxide is the silent killer you know."

"I know, I know," she answered in monotone, adding blithely, "I'm much more responsible now – kids and all."

"Right," he replied, leaving go of her as they continued their walk, passing various bars and brasseries as they went.

He half considered suggesting they go into one for a drink, but the sensible part of his brain knew that that way danger lay. Having polished off several bottles of wine during and after dinner, they were currently in a very merry state of tipsiness. Any more and they'd be downright drunk.

Drunk was not good. Drunk meant emotional, or angry, or just really, really stupid.

Will would take giddy reminiscences over all those things any day.

"Maybe I should have taken a leaf out of your book," he mused, his mood suddenly rather in contrast with all the life and noise going on around him. "Had a couple of kids, you know."

"Nah," Alicia made a face. "You could never have done both."

He looked at her questioningly.

"Had kids and the big successful career. It just doesn't happen," she said matter-of-factly.

"Oh! No!" she amended with a laugh. "How could I forget, you're a guy. So, you definitely _could_ have had both. Guys get to all the time."

"And women don't?" he asked interestedly.

Alicia just shook her head. "Not really."

"Well, _you_ seem to."

She laughed heartily. The suggestion that anything in her life could be characterised as balanced and successful at this point was honestly hilarious to her.

"I'm forty years old, and a junior associate, Will," she said pointedly. "They're not going to be making me a judge any time soon."

"Do you even want to be a judge?"

"No," she smiled. "But the point is, even if I did, it wouldn't be on the cards, because I was out of the game for thirteen years."

"Do you regret it?" he asked, as they rounded the corner onto Dearborn Street.

"Hmm. I guess maybe some parts, a little," she answered honestly. "Not the having kids part though. That's the last thing I would ever regret. Getting to be home when they were little was amazing. It was a gift, really."

Will nodded. He knew how much her children meant to her, and had no difficulty imagining her as the most capable and loving mother possible. What he sometimes found harder to picture was her life in Hyland Park for all those years, playing the suburban housewife. It was inconceivable to him how someone like Alicia - who had always been the brightest, the best, the most beautiful at Georgetown (and who walked into the office everyday and proved she still was) – could have been happy there. More unfathomable still was how she had possibly put up with all the things she had done from Peter fucking Florick.

Clearly, there were things Will quite simply did not understand. He readily admitted it.

"So, you could still do it, you know" Alicia spoke up eventually. "The whole kids thing. You'd be good at it."

"You think?" he asked, surprised at how the casual endorsement actually touched him.

"Sure," she replied, keeping her tone light. "Though obviously you'd have to become less of a workaholic. _And_ give up your playboy ways," she added slyly.

"Ok, I _might_ give you the workaholic thing," he admitted good-naturedly. "But I'm not a playboy. I haven't had a single girlfriend in over a year."

"Well, that's the whole point about playboys, Will," she said, raising a sardonic eyebrow. "They don't have girlfriends. They have… encounters."

He threw his head back and laughed. "Well, I haven't had any of those in the last year either!" he protested, and it was the truth.

"I don't know," she teased in a sing-song voice, sounding rather tipsy. "Office gossip would suggest you're not short of offers. You certainly weren't back in college. You should've been paying me a P.A's salary for two years – all I did was fend off calls and deal with enquiries."

"Oh, that's an exaggeration!"

"Not much!"

If Will thought back on it, he supposed he probably had dated quite a few girls in college – though he hadn't exactly managed it with the girl he'd most wanted to. Alicia and he had stopped before things escalated beyond recovery that night after their mock trial win, and it had never happened again.

Well, not _never._

But not for a long time.

"I guess I probably have sewn my share of wild oats over the years," he admitted, realising a response was required. "But I don't really have the time for blind dates and random hook-ups and all that stuff these days."

"Because you're a workaholic!" Alicia surmised triumphantly.

"Because my career takes up a lot of my time, yes," he agreed with a wry smile. "Plus it all just starts to seem kind of pointless after a while, you know?"

She nodded, meeting his gaze steadfastly, and Will thought (not for the first time) what incredible eyes she had; intelligent and kind, seeming always to see more than you'd intended them to.

"Anyway," he continued, his tone taking on a more teasing lilt, "I'm not a saint. But I would just like to state that, for the record, when my cases go badly, I don't make a habit of kissing my employees to cheer myself up."

Alicia, already a little flushed from the wine, felt her cheeks redden. She had almost forgotten about that.

"Oh," she said awkwardly. "No…God, no. I was there, I know what it was."

"Yeah, about that," he returned swiftly. "What _was_ it for you, Alicia? A one-time thing, or…" he trailed off, reticent about even voicing the alternative. "I'm not asking you for anything I just… think it would be good for us both to have some idea where we stand."

All of a sudden, it occurred to Alicia to wonder where exactly they were walking to. In her mind, it was the El station. In his however, she realised, it could very well be his apartment. They were in his general neck of the woods, after all, and it might be reasonable for him to assume that she would come back to his place, then call a cab from there. But what if she got there, and _didn't_ call a cab?

This was not the sort of thing Alicia would ever have imagined she would be worried about again in her lifetime. Romantic entanglements, she'd thought, were well and truly behind her. She would have professed to be a fairly self-aware person, someone who recognized what her morals were, her standards and her self-set limits.

She would, in short, have presumed to know exactly what she would or would not do in any given situation.

In light of recent events, it was difficult to trust herself quite so much as she used to.

She literally stopped in her tracks, looking around for the nearest recognisable spot. "You know, Will, I don't really like getting the El at night, I think I'm just going to call a cab to the Goodman," she said, pointing to the theatre across the road.

"Uh…ok," he replied, seeming (understandably) blindsided. "You know my place is like 15 blocks away, you can call from there if you like."

But she had already whipped out her cell-phone, and was starting to dial. "Thanks," she said. "But I really probably should get home. Peter, you know…and the kids…" her voice faded, sounding weak to her own ears, and she kept her eyes resolutely focussed on her cell-phone screen, refusing to look up at him.

He waited. She made the call, conscious of his eyes on her the entire time.

"Be here in five minutes," she said awkwardly a few seconds later, tossing her phone back in her bag.

"Great," he answered blandly.

Silence.

----

She was barely out of sight when his blackberry began to buzz. He pulled it from his pocket and glanced at the name flashing on screen. His finger hovered over the red button for a brief second – but curiosity got the better of him.

Ultimately, she simply wasn't a person he wanted to ignore.

"Ok, look," Alicia had evidently decided to dispense with formalities, her voice coming through immediately, tense and urgent. "I don't know what happened the other night. I don't know why, I don't know how. I just _don't know_, Will. That's the truth."

She paused, and he heard her inhale deeply.

"Obviously you and I have history," she continued quietly, "and we've both done a really good job of not mentioning it for the past six months – which, by the way, I have really appreciated. I think we can see now why that's been a pretty great idea."

"And why might that be?" Will asked her, and it sounded a little like a challenge.

"Because it's just _easier_," Alicia breathed out, glancing warily at her taxi driver. Mercifully, he was absorbed entirely in fiddling with the knobs on his radio, seemingly unconcerned by what was going on in the backseat. Still, she lowered her voice.

"You're a partner, and I'm a junior associate. If people think you hired me because I was your college…_whatever_ – and I'm not saying you did," she hastened to add, "but if people _think_ you did – it doesn't look good for either of us, does it?"

As it happened, Will was almost entirely beyond giving a fuck what anyone else thought about him or the choices he made, but he sensed her question was rhetorical.

Indeed, she was off again, with barely a pause for breath. "Plus there's the bigger problem of the fact that these little trips down memory lane – as much fun as they are – only lead to complication. I really don't need that, Will – and you don't either, I'm sure. There have to be better prospects for you than a married woman with two kids whose every move is apparently now being recorded on Twitter."

In principle, Will (who generally headed straight for the hills – or the office – at the first sign of "baggage")would certainly have agreed. In reality, though, things were proving to be rather less cut and dried. He paused for a moment, trying to absorb everything she'd said.

"So," he began eventually, carefully. "That's what you're chalking this all up to, huh?"

He was fairly sure he'd gotten the gist. "_Nostalgia_?"

"…Yeah," Alicia replied, with a nod she knew he couldn't see, realising that it did sound vaguely absurd. What happened between them the week previously hadn't been based on feelings lingering from decades past. They were both adults, neither of them harbouring silly crushes or trying to recapture lost youth.

No. It was a moment in time all of its own, neither weighed down nor bolstered up by anything other than the then and there.

Alicia was not a stupid person – and more than that, she was a realist. She knew all this. She did her utmost best to ignore it all.

"If you want to call it nostalgia, Will," she returned, sounding utterly exhausted, "then yes, I think that's as good an explanation as any. It's the _only_ good explanation."

Will said nothing, the only sounds being each other's breathing on each end of the line; bizarrely intimate.

Alicia sighed deeply into the receiver, and when she spoke, her voice was practically a whisper. "Because let's be honest," she continued seriously, "if it's not that… then we've got bigger problems here."

--

Friday morning rolled around, and Alicia was at her desk at 7:15 promptly, despite having woken up to two lethargic teenagers and a splitting wine headache. Carey was arriving earlier and earlier these days, and she figured she should at least give herself a fighting chance.

By 9am, she figured that if he hadn't come to speak to her by now, he wasn't going to. She let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding, slipped her feet out of her heels under her desk, and got stuck into the paperwork literally piling up around her.

It was quite the shock, therefore when around about 9:30, he appeared in her doorframe.

"Alicia," he smiled easily. "Staff meeting in Diane's office at 11. We've got a big case coming in – former soldier, suing for unfair dismissal."

She nodded benignly. "Sure. Sounds interesting."

He shrugged. "Could be. I don't know about you, but I think we've had a little too much "interesting" lately. Give me a couple of paying clients with run of the mill cases for a while and I'll be happy."

"Tell me about it," Alicia replied, allowing herself to laugh. If he was trying to set her at her ease, the least she could do was let him.

"Hey, Will!" she called impulsively, as he was retreating from her doorway. "I… I'm sorry about last night."

"Don't be. It was fun."

She raised an eyebrow sceptically.

"It was!" he protested. "At least it was before you started getting all serious on me."

"Yeah," she agreed with a small smile, because it was true. It _had_ been nice to be out, with no responsibilities or obligations. Things with him had always been so easy, once she'd allowed them to be.

"Look, you don't have to worry," Will said quietly, stepping a little further into her office, pushing the door half-way closed. There were eyes and ears everywhere, and no-one ever forgot it.

"I don't want to make your life harder than it already is. I'm not going to jeopardise either of our reputations over this." He regarded her intently. "I'm not going to jeopardise our friendship over this."

She nodded almost imperceptibly, looking directly at him with gratitude in her eyes. "_Thank you_," she said after a beat, the simple words seeming to be loaded with meaning.

He broke her gaze, unwilling to let either of them drown in the intensity of the moment. "Alright," he said, his tone practical as he headed out the door. "So, Diane's office at 11, ok?"

"I'll be there," she answered. "Thanks, Will."

He just smiled warmly. "See you, Ali."

Her mouth fell open a little as she leaned back in her chair, watching his retreating form. She hadn't heard that name in nearly twenty years – and even then, it was only ever from one person.

He hadn't resurrected it when she came to work here, and she'd been glad at the time. She'd imagined that they both wanted to keep things strictly professional. But things happen, truths make themselves known, and old habits die hard. He couldn't help that the old nickname had slipped out, any more than Alicia could help the tingle that buzzed inside her when she'd heard it.

She turned her attention to her paperwork once more, and attempted to concentrate. But the same old mantras insisted upon echoing through her brain torturously.

_He's your boss, he's your boss, he's your boss._

_You're married, you're married, you're married._

Alicia dropped her pen abruptly and sighed, casting a hand across her face.

_You are screwed, you are screwed, you are screwed._

_

* * *

_

**_This is the kind of story i wanted to read - but no-one had written it, so i figured i would give it a go. I don't know how good it is (still not sure if i can always hear Alicia/ Will's voice completely clearly in my head) - feedback appreciated._**_  
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